


Lonely Aspects Such As These

by decisivegreen



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Force Traditions, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death, M/M, Pining, jonmartin is canon-typical pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decisivegreen/pseuds/decisivegreen
Summary: The only thing about the Institute that Martin is sure of is that the building it’s in is very, very old. He’s never seen anything like it before in his life, although that’s not really saying much because Martin has only ever been to three planets. And he only really remembers two of them. Socomo, in the Kiblini Sector, where he and his mother moved when she started gettingreallysick. And, well, Cela, in the Astal Sector, where he lives now, where he works at the Institute.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Lonely Aspects Such As These

The only thing about the Institute that Martin is sure of is that the building it’s in is very, very old. He’s never seen anything like it before in his life, although that’s not really saying much because Martin has only ever been to three planets. And he only really remembers two of them. Socomo, in the Kiblini Sector, where he and his mother moved when she started getting _really_ sick. And, well, Cela, in the Astal Sector, where he lives now, where he works at the Institute.

Astal is barely any different than Kiblini: another Outer Rim sector just far enough off the Llanic Spice Run to not attract much trouble. And also just far enough off to not attract much in the way of credits, either. All in all it makes a good place for someone to start a weird, creepy secret project collecting ancient datacrons and mystic texts, the sorts actually written out by hand on cloth, and to keep it all running through stars knows what political upheavals have kept the rest of the galaxy occupied for as long as anyone remembers.

And as long as that’s been, the building that houses the Institute has got to be older. It’s made of this weird sort of gray stone that glints when the light hits it just right, but the stone is really worn down on the outside of the building, basically smooth to the touch everywhere. All the lighting and stuff like that is attached to the outside of the stone of the walls and ceilings instead of being run through tunnels behind it. It kind of looks like the houses on Socomo did, all pieced together out of ship-parts and whatever wiring schemas someone could get to work with each other. And then there’s the tunnels. Even before all the stuff with Elias, Martin knew there was something weird about them. Everything down there felt old. Even the air.

Martin thinks about the building a lot these days, mostly just to distract himself. He wonders how old it might be, and who might have built it, and for what. Maybe the others still wonder, too, in private. Years ago, when Martin had first got the job, he’d tried asking the other archival assistants what they thought. They either didn’t care (Tim) or didn’t like him enough to humor the question (Jon) or both (everyone else, pretty much.) Sasha teased him for years about him asking so many questions when he’d first been hired, before she — well, before.

Martin also comes into work later now than he used to. When he’d first started, he’d been so terrified of the slightest thing making Elias double-check his forged credentials that he came in early more often than not. (Thinking back, it’s obvious that Elias must have known from the very start that Martin was lying through his stupid teeth about his work history. Probably got some sort of sick satisfaction out of it.) But Martin had needed the pay so badly — or his mother did — and Elias really had been a terrifying boss. And now his — well, his mother’s dead now, so Martin doesn’t need to wire credits back to Socomo every time he’s paid. And he works for Peter Lukas now anyways.

And Peter doesn’t care at all if he’s late. No one does, not really. Jon might, if he noticed, but he’s distracted enough these days with his own planning and researching and obsessing. At least that makes avoiding him easier. Jon’s still hardest to be cold to. It’s hard; it’s really really hard.

For today’s work, Peter has left him a stack of datacrons and ‘cards to process. Most of them are historical records about the Lonely. Ship captains who drifted in space not because the Vast called to them but because they needed the distance from everything (everyone?) else. Injured soldiers who felt like years passed during their mere hours in bacta tanks, who emerged terrified that they’d been forgotten, that their comrades had forgotten them and their wars passed them by. Sole survivors of crashes, marooned on empty planets, sending distress beacons into the skies that broadcasted impossible coordinates. The usual. There’s some requisition forms as well: orders to make, payments to send. Martin gets through most of it without having to so much as see anyone besides the droids that run messages from one part of the Institute to another. He used to talk to them, especially if it was just him and the droids in Artifact Storage. Those used to be his favorite days. The droids know he doesn’t do that anymore, though.

He works quietly for a long time. When his legs start to feel cramped or he’s getting drowsy, he walks through the hallways for a little while. He’s getting good at picking routes where he won’t run into anyone. He’s not sure how he knows, he just...does.

There’s another thing about the Institute that’s weird. The stone that makes up all the walls and floors and ceilings is — the thing is that sometimes Martin thinks he can see...threads, almost, of light, running through them like something living. It happened more often while Elias ran things, when sometimes Martin would get the creepy feeling he was being watched even when he was supposed to be alone. (It probably _was_ Elias watching.) Now he sees it sometimes when Peter’s nearby, all invisible and watching silently. It’s always out of the corner of his eyes, never something he can look at directly, just...nearly there. And he’s even pretty sure he’s not imagining it. Not positive, just...pretty sure.

It’s late when Martin leaves his office to return the datacrons to Artifact Storage. He could have a droid do it, but he’s headed to Peter’s office afterwards anyways. The lights are already on when the entry slides open for him, and Martin realizes, with an unpleasant jolt, that he’s not alone. Basira is there, legs propped up on a table, fiddling with an ancient, broken datacron.

She lifts two fingers in greeting. “Martin. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Basira,” he says crisply. He goes straight for the shelves. He’s a little bit tempted to just shove the datacrons somewhere random so he can leave as quickly as possible, but then Basira would probably tell Jon that it wasn’t _her_ who misfiled the Lonely ‘crons, it was Martin, and then Jon would track him down and — well, better to do it right the first time.

“I’d take it personally if it wasn’t all of us you were avoiding.” She sighs audibly. “You know, Jon thinks you’ve got some crazy plan.”

Stars, he’s really trying hard not to think about Jon right now, and Basira has to just _bring him up_ like that. Martin works as quickly as he can, searching the indices on the shelves. His every footfall sounds too loud on the stone floors. “Maybe I’m just busy,” he says, “doing, oh, you know, my _job_.”

“Right,” says Basira. He can basically hear her rolling her eyes. Mercifully she doesn’t say anything else. For a little while, as he puts things up, he can just barely hear her fiddling with the datacron. It beeps every once and awhile like old datacrons do. Always makes you feel like you’re halfway to fixing it, even though you never are.

Martin is shoving the last datacron into the right place when Basira speaks again, abruptly this time, more self-conscious than he’s used to hearing her. “Do you think he’s right? Jon, I mean. And Elias, I guess.” When Martin turns to look at her, she hasn’t got her feet propped up on the table anymore. Instead she’s got one leg tucked up to her chest, and her chin propped up on her knee, and her shoulders are all hunched up. “About there being aspects to the Force. And even the Jedi not fully understanding it themselves.”

Of all the things Martin’s seen, it’s really the Jedi that he’s still not sure are actually real.

No use telling Basira that, though. Not when he’s trying to keep her _out_ of all this, away from Lukas’s influence at least. Ex-Imperial or no, she’s — she’s not a bad person. Martin’s pretty sure of that. The longer she stays with the Institute, the harder it is to remember her in the blemishless, shiny white plastoid she’d worn when they first met. But it’s easier to be cold to her when he remembers her like that, so he dredges up all those memories — Daisy pointing a blaster big enough to melt through durasteel straight at his head, there’s a fun one to remember.

“I don’t know,” he says, not looking at her. And then, as he leaves, “Maybe. Maybe not. Honestly, I don’t think I care.”

“Right, then.” Basira’s voice is flat, like she should have known better than to expect any other response. And honestly, she should’ve. “Bye, I guess.”

When Peter Lukas took over the Institute, he took over Elias’s office too. It’s on the highest floor with a big window facing towards Cela’Arah, the actual city where actual people actually live. When Elias ran things, it always seemed sort of creepy the way he spent so much time just watching. Peter spends a lot of time watching too, but he watches differently. It’s like he’s somehow further away when he watches than Elias was, even though Peter stands in the exact same spot Elias used to.

This evening the door to the office is closed. On this floor the rooms haven’t been fitted with proper durasteel doors that woosh open and closed based on your security clearance. Instead the doors are the same stone that the rest of the building is made out of, fitted into durasteel frames that hinge out into the hall. But Martin doesn’t call out. He places a hand on the door and finds it cold. It’s always cold. The door isn’t closed because Peter isn’t there; the door is closed because Martin can enter even if the door is closed, at least if he’s been doing things right. Isolating himself. Paying attention to the loneliness. Letting it fester.

As a boy Martin had stared up often at the dim night sky and imagined he was seeing into Wild Space, where absolutely anything could be. Even then he’d known he was being stupid. He didn’t really believe that was what he was seeing. But it was just like playing Jedi. Like every other child growing up on Socomo, he’d made an effort to try and move things just by thinking, the way the legends said the Jedi could. And of course it never worked. He’d never expected it to, no more than he’d expected to see into Wild Space just by looking up, no more than he’d expected his mother to one day smile at him and muss up his hair in the marketplace the way other mothers did with their kids. But he’d kept hoping anyways. Not so much because he thought it would do him any good. More because what in stars else was he supposed to do?

Now, alone, he waits with his hand against the stone of the door, and it hardly takes any effort at all, and it doesn’t take any hope. All he has to do is think about the distance between him and everyone else, the distance that’s always been there and the distance that will only grow greater with time. That’s a real thing. It’s not something you can look at, maybe, but it’s real.

Honestly he just has to think about Jon, Jon who’s maybe even more gone than Martin is, subsumed by some different Aspect of what Peter calls The Force That Binds All Things. Which means that maybe all this is pointless and Martin is isolating himself, stringing Peter along, just so that something else can kill or claim Jon. But this is the only thing Martin can do. So he’ll do it. He loves Jon too much to do nothing.

And if that means dissolving into the strange and lonely half-life that Peter lives in service to his Aspect, then so be it. Even if it means being lost forever. No one will really miss him that much. After all, Martin has only ever loved; he’s not sure he’s been loved, and if he was to be, he’s not sure that he’d be any good at it, being loved. Even if he had a chance with Jon and didn’t immediately screw it up. Who knows? After all this time without, maybe it would feel...claustrophobic. An unwanted weight, unneeded ballast.

With that thought he feels himself stop feeling. Feels the solid of his too-tall, too-wide self slip into the mist. Feels the sharp edge of rejection and isolation that’s always been the shadow of his feelings for Jon fade away. And then how he feels about Jon — that’s last to go.

Once it’s done he steps through the door. There are threads of light in the corners of his vision. He ignores them. Peter is standing in his office, facing the window, translucent, limned with mist. If Martin were to look down at himself, he’d see himself the same way: barely there.

“Martin! How good of you to join me.” Peter turns and smiles. “You’re really getting quite good at this. That was quite quick!”

Even in the half-existence of the Aspect of the Lonely, Peter sounds genuinely impressed and pleased. And even in the Lonely, Martin is a little grateful for the Lonely’s influence deadening the things he feels. Because Peter is all but glowing with pride, and if Martin could feel just a little more, something in him would light up at the praise. It’s nice to finally be good at something, even if it’s only disappearing.

**Author's Note:**

> I was musing on Twitter that I missed Tumblr-style writing ask memes, the sort where someone gives you two AUs and a pairing and you riff about how you'd write the pairing in the AU you preferred, and my friend hit me with "jonmartin Star Trek or Star Wars AU," and ~2,000 words later here were are.
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/djpresentmic), mostly just retweeting other people's TMA art, but pop by and say hi if you're curious about the truly deranged amount of worldbuilding I thought about and didn't stuff into this fic :)
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated!


End file.
